Chapter Thirty-Three

Peter drove. He didn’t know how he managed enough coordination and sense to steer the car, but here he was doing it. Doing it in spite of the fact that his breath was quavering, two steps short of sobbing. Doing it in spite of the fact that, when he allowed himself to think for a moment of the predicament he was in, his eyes blurred with tears. Doing it in spite of the fact that his hands, every few seconds, trembled violently on the wheel.

Doing it in spite of the fact that there was a hunting knife pressed into the tender flesh just below his ribs.

He had thought he could meet Ed at Rosehill, offer him some support, maybe even some safety. He hadn’t really thought that Timothy Bright would be there. He thought he would gather Ed up, bring him home, and make him sleep. Things would seem more rational when he awakened.

When he arrived, he’d parked his car near the front gates and walked up to them, peered inside, searching for some sign of Ed. He hadn’t noticed his car on the street and was relieved. Peter assumed he had arrived first, and that would give him the advantage. He could at least be with Ed from the inception of this mission.

But these somewhat optimistic thoughts were interrupted suddenly and horrifyingly when a little man ran up to him. Peter gasped when he saw him, his clothes spattered with blood, his eyes wild.

“You have to help me.” The voice came out as a croak. The man was trembling.

“What happened?” Peter thought the face looked familiar for only a moment or two. Then it clicked. Ed’s description and the newspaper photo he had seen brought everything into sharp focus. This was Timothy Bright. And he was covered with blood!

The encounter seemed surreal; Peter wanted to wake up.

“I had a wreck.” Timothy was panting. “In my car. Over on Peterson. Could you drive me to the hospital?”

Peter stared at him, frozen. He wasn’t sure if he should run or if he should try to detain the little man, keep him here until Ed arrived.

Wasn’t this guy supposed to be dead? The thought chilled him. This person had to bear a very close resemblance, that’s all.

And what about all the blood?

Peter wanted very much to run.

“Where’s your car? I’d like to take a look at it.”

“C’mon, buddy, I have to get to a hospital.”

Peter looked him over carefully and could see no wounds, no lacerations, no bruises. The blood, he thought, had to come from somewhere else.

Peter’s mouth grew dry, and his heart started beating more rapidly. Would his own blood be added to the blood already staining this man?

Before he had a chance to ponder the question, Timothy Bright—or whoever he was—brought out a hunting knife and poked its point into Peter’s stomach. “You’re taking me for a ride. I have to get out of here, now.” His voice was hoarse, and there was no mistaking the desperation in it. Peter thought it useless to argue with a desperate person with a knife.

“Come on,” he whispered. “My car’s over here.” He stopped for just a moment and glanced down at the knife. “There’s no need for that. I’ll do what you want.”

“I just like to have some insurance.” The guy grinned at him. “Now, I don’t want to hear any more out of you. What did you say your name was?”

“It’s John.” The guy didn’t know who he was! Perhaps that could help him. Perhaps, for Ed’s sake, being in the wrong place at the wrong time was exactly the right thing to do.

He pulled the car from its space in front of the Fireplace Inn restaurant, licking his dry lips, trying to force himself to concentrate on the strip of asphalt before him. He thought of Mark Dietrich, driving along Lake Shore Drive, and how that drive, on his way to see Ed and Peter, had sent him down a long fall toward death. Would the result be the same for him? He thought of his family in Carbondale, his two sisters, his mom and dad. A sudden image of the funeral flashed before him, his mother inconsolable, his father stoic, wiping his bald pate with a handkerchief. His hands were trembling, the only sign of the pain the loss of his only son was causing him.

“Where do you want me to take you?” Peter whispered, his voice hoarse from fear.

“Just drive. I’ll navigate.”

*

Ed sped east on Touhy, heading for Ridge. He knew he could turn left there and be on his way north, to Evanston and St. Francis Hospital. There were probably other hospitals closer, but he knew the way directly to this one.

Helene Bright bled on the seat next to him. Every few minutes, she would waver from within the veil of pain and consciousness, mumbling something incoherent.

Finally Ed made sense of what she was saying: “Theodore.”

And then it clicked. Theodore was the brother buried next to Timothy. He had died in 1988 or something close to that.

What if it wasn’t him? What if the person buried in Theodore’s grave was actually Timothy?

But then who was buried in Timothy’s grave two years ago?

The whole thing was so confusing, Ed longed to drop the woman off at the emergency entrance and just be done with this whole fiasco. Let the Chicago Police Department sort things out. Ed had tried, after all, to help them, and they would have none of it. It would serve them right.

They could never solve this case. And Ed wondered if he could. But he felt he had more of a key to things than anyone, and because of that, he had to press on.

Helene Bright suddenly grabbed his arm. “Theodore,” she croaked again. “Don’t you see?”

“What are you talking about?” Ed tried to keep his voice even, keep it level, but the annoyance and despair made that difficult.

At a red light, he looked over at Helene Bright. She was fully awake now, and although her bruised face wore all the earmarks of confusion, she seemed coherent enough.

“What are you talking about?” Ed repeated.

“I never saw the body.”

“What?”

“I never saw Theodore’s body. Don’t you understand?”

Ed shook his head.

“I only learned about Theodore’s death from Timothy.” Helene sobbed. Then a cough racked and spasmed through her, leaving her gasping for air. Her ribs were probably bruised from the beating.

“So?”

“So maybe he was never really dead. At least not then.”

“What are you saying?” Ed pressed harder on the accelerator as he passed from Chicago’s northern border into Evanston. He asked even though things were already falling into place.

Helene Bright gazed out the window for a long time. Her breathing was labored, and Ed began to wonder if she would ever answer his question. Finally she turned back to him. When he glanced at her, a wave of pity washed over him. Her eyes were the only thing that seemed alive in the beaten face. Her skin was ashen, and the bruises were already swelling and deepening to purple.

“I’m saying that there was no funeral. At least that I knew about.”

“And?” St. Francis was coming up on his right, and Ed signaled to make the turn that led back to the emergency room. He needed to hear how things had played out.

“The graves were there, with markers. I bought one for each of us when my family was killed, back in 1970.” She worked to draw her next breath. “There was a car accident.”

Ed pulled up to the entrance. “I’ll help you get in.”

“Timothy called me months after Theodore was supposed to have died. I never questioned it. He hated me and would have done anything to hurt me. Excluding me from mourning over Teddy’s death was par for the course.”

“Let’s get you inside. You can tell me more while we wait.” Ed hurried around to the other side of the car, opened the door, and took Helene Bright’s arm. She slid gingerly from the seat, and Ed knew she was hurting. She winced when she stood, but once standing, she gave him a smile. “At least I’m alive.”

While they waited, Helene Bright told Ed the rest. “After he told me, I went to visit the grave. The dates were there, they were engraved on the tombstone.” Helene wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. The gesture was almost angry, and Ed realized this was not a woman used to giving in to her tears.

He patted her hand.

“Couldn’t someone have engraved the date of Theodore’s death on the tombstone for Timothy? Wouldn’t that be an easy enough thing to do?”

“I suppose. But why would he want to do that?”

“Why is a question that doesn’t apply to much of Timothy’s behavior. Who knows? To hurt me, I suppose.” She swallowed, and Ed could see there was some difficulty there. Around her throat was a necklace of small reddish-purple bruises and the wound, with drying black blood, where he’d dug the knife into her throat.

“Then where is Theodore?”

Helene Bright looked at him, her eyes wide. “Haven’t you realized it yet?”

The idea had been there since she’d begun mumbling “Theodore,” and it filled him with horror but relief as well. Perhaps there was a plausible solution to this whole thing after all.

“What?”

“It’s Theodore. It’s Theodore in Timothy’s grave. Theodore was the one who was murdered.”

Ed closed his eyes.

*

“I can’t let you go. You understand that, don’t you?”

Peter shivered in the dim light of the little barn. The guy—who said his name was David—had brought him here. David…David Long. Peter remembered that the last guy killed, John Austin, had been found outside the building where a David Long lived. He looked around and saw that the building, now left abandoned, thick with the smell of earth and old straw, corners crowded with spider webs, had once been a stable. There was a stall for a horse to his left. Old riding supplies—a curry brush, a hoof pick, a harness, and an English saddle—collected dust on hooks on the wall.

“I wouldn’t tell anyone. I don’t even know who you are or what this is about.”

Timothy laughed. “That’s where you’re wrong, my little friend. You see, I’m an astute observer. A watcher.” He leaned in so close that Peter could smell his rancid breath. Peter backed away from the face, but it only made Bright draw closer. They were close enough to kiss.

“I’ve got a funny feeling,” Timothy whispered, “you’re operating under some misconceptions.”

“What are you talking about?” Dread rose up in Peter’s gut, icy cold and paralyzing.

“You thought, didn’t you, that I didn’t know who you were?”

“Who am I?”

Timothy laughed again, laughed until he held his aching sides. Tears formed in his eyes. “You don’t know?”

Peter knew what this was all about, and it removed completely any small sense of security he had drawn from what he thought was anonymity. His mouth went dry, and he found it harder to breathe.

Timothy slapped him hard, open handed across the face. “You know who you are. And I do too. Does the name Ed Comparetto ring a bell?”

Peter bit his lip, feeling darkness close in all around him. Closing in, closing in, even though the sun, a milky white ball in a misty sky, shone an unflattering matte light on everything outside.

“W-what are you going to do?”

“Nothing right now. You’re too choice a piece of bait.” Timothy ran his hand down Peter’s chest. Peter recoiled at the touch. It reminded him of a snake winding its way down his body. “Very choice,” Timothy whispered.

“But right now I have some business to take care of in the big house. Can I trust you to stay here and wait for me?”

“Of course. I won’t go anywhere.”

“You lie so convincingly.” Timothy withdrew a roll of duct tape from his jacket pocket. “What did you call yourself? John?”

Peter stared at him.

“Tell me your name.”

“Don’t you already know it?”

His impertinence earned Peter another slap across the face. It barely hurt. He was beginning to feel numb outside as well as within. “It’s Peter.”

“Peter. How appropriate. It should help me when I make a certain phone call.”

Timothy stooped and began binding Peter’s ankles together.

*

“So she’ll be okay?” Ed asked Dr. Marilyn Harris, the emergency room physician who had taken over Helene Bright’s care.

The doctor combed a hand through her shoulder length salt-and-pepper hair. She looked tired, worn down by too much trauma. She nodded. “She was beaten pretty badly, but it’s nothing time won’t heal. There shouldn’t be any permanent damage. Physical damage, that is.” Marilyn Harris looked pointedly at him. “What happened? She wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“I don’t know. I found her like this. I don’t even know the woman.” Ed felt as if he was betraying Helene Bright, but her nephew was still out there somewhere.

God knew where.

As Ed hurried out of the hospital, he realized Timothy Bright must now be in a state of extreme rage.

There was no telling what he could do.